9.
CHILD LABOUR IN LONDON IN THE LATTER HALF OF THE 19th CENTURY
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Children's work was taken for granted by adults and children in 19th century London working class. Keeping the home together was often achieved by joint effort.
In the second half of the century the child's economic role contracted because of the establishment of compulsory education and protective legislation. Although independent children had more or less vanished by the end of the 19th century, and although children were generally likely to be dependent on their families, children's work still flourished. Boys accepted employment in. order to earn money but girls were more occupied with domestic
• and often unpaid work, e.g. housework, baby minding. Parents took for granted the right to their children's wage. Children were used extensively for running errands, fetching beer, shopping, taking lunch to their families working in factories, foraging for fuel, fetching water (a constant supply of water to every house in London had not been achieved by the end of the 19th century.)
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The most demanding form of "errands' was the fetching and carrying of outwork. Raw materials had to be collected from the employing firm and finished work returned. Such work was commonly done in many of the poorest homes of South and East London. Finished work had to be examined for faults before it was paid for, which involved a wait of several hours. A contemptuous disregard for the convenience or needs:: of the homeworker was an integral part of the way in which this highly exploitative relationship was maintained.
A homeworker would lose up to 14 days per week waiting around for raw materials and checking finished articles. Sending a child to collect materials etc. was a way of reducing the financial loss incurred by inevitable waiting. Small children were laden with heavy burdens.
"Sickly children hardly more than infants staggering along in the wind and rain, splashed from head to foot by the black greasy mud, panting for breath, and with every muscle of their rickety little bodies strained beneath the load, upon which the next day's dinner depends.
Children's time was not valued, most of the children found by the London School Board in 1899 to be working over 19 hours a week were earning a penny an hour or lass.
As children were excluded from production in factories and workshops, they were put into service work like errands and cleaning which often were dead-end jobs exploiting their cheap labour without giving training, their help was increasingly that of a dogsbody rather than an apprentice.
Many children were employed in shops and stalls for very long hours, shops stayed open until very late on Fridays or Saturdays. It was illegal for boys under 14 and girls under 16 to be out selling after 9 p.m. but this restriction was practically. inoperative in London.
8. Many children were not paid because it was a family business,
homework often took on the character..of a family enterprise, especially where there was no regular adult wage coming in and the next meal depended on the homework earnings.
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